Adam Chandler reports on Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution for the conflict with the Palestinians:

The speech was deemed remarkable because it contained Netanyahu’s first-ever call for the establishment of a Palestinian state, a statement he had resisted throughout his long and winding political career.

Nearly six years and three Gaza wars later, and with his political legacy on the ropes, Netanyahu issued a major retraction on Monday evening: “I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a radio interview.

Netanyahu’s latest statement is being portrayed as a “reversal” of his earlier position, but as Chandler and many others have already noted this is just a reversion back to the position he has held for almost his entire career. In truth, it is just confirmation of what most observers assumed to be true of Netanyahu’s views all along. Whatever he might have said six years ago, he has governed as if he were absolutely opposed to Palestinian statehood, and that’s because he is and always has been. After all, what would he have done differently over the last few years if he had been a declared opponent of Palestinian statehood instead of being a nominal supporter?

If his party had not been struggling in the final days of the campaign, it’s possible that he might have kept up the pretense that he still theoretically supported the creation of a Palestinian state at some point in the distant future, but at this point he is more concerned to poach votes from the other nationalist parties. If Netanyahu manages to hang on to power, his pre-election statement on the two-state solution ought to create another rift with the U.S. He is declaring his overt opposition to another major U.S. policy goal in the region, and that ought to come at a price for his relations with the U.S. Unfortunately, I suspect that he’ll pay no more of a price for this than he has paid for all of his other affronts over the years.